The Flag of Morocco
This Passover holiday I visited my grandmother with a pad of paper and a pen to talk to her about how she came to be in New York. To start out I got a few basic details about my grandmother’s childhood. It became difficult to understand her because she would constantly switch languages to Arabic or French.
My grandmother, Luna Tuati by birth, grew up in Morocco. She spent several years studying in France, but always came back to Ksar el Kebir, Morocco, where her family was. Her father was a tea merchant, selling leaves from Taiwan to parts of North Africa. It was a good business and the Tuatis were a larger family; my grandmother had four older brothers. My grandmother loved Morocco and never dreamed as a child that she would leave.
After the state of Israel was won in 1948 pressure on Jewish communities in North African countries increased enormously. Luna’s father’s merchant business was harassed and sabotaged by non-Jewish competitors and neighbors. In 1954 my grandmother, her parents, and her three brothers (one had died) left Morocco to come to Tel Aviv.
Times were not easy and my grandmother and her mother got work as seamstresses. Her brothers all got work in the army and her father worked at a small shop. They lived in a small apartment for years. As time passed my grandmother’s family did better for themselves and moved; my grandmother lived in Israel for less than a decade, because she met a young American Jew vacationing in the holy land and fell in love. After several months together in Israel my grandmother moved to New York with my grandfather and they got married on January 14th 1963.
My grandfather worked in his father’s machinery shipping business, so money was never a problem. My grandfather even bought their house, the house my grandmother still owns, without having to take out a loan. Once in America Luna quickly learned to speak better English than the bits my grandfather had taught her in Israel. Soon my grandmother was once again working as a seamstress, working until she had her first child and started raising a family.
My grandfather is now dead. My grandmother still lives in their old home and her brothers are scattered across the globe. One is buried in France, where he moved from Israel, the youngest is buried in Israel, and one is still living in Tzfat. Both of her parents are buried in Jerusalem.
| Previous | Back to Top | Next |
